Dyads

Some days ago, as I was reflecting on recent work, I noticed that dyads showed up rather frequently in my recent work. Take a look at these:

The Parking Lot

The Homestead

Look at this painting of a single item:

The Blue Bicycle

           Two wheels! Also object and shadow.

            My most recent:

Ed's House

Pairs of pairs, for Heaven’s sake!

What does it mean? Is there a secret significance here, something symbolic? Does it represent, for example, a wish to be part of a pair? Or an awareness of being part of a pair?

Other paintings appear to represent something about choices.

The industrial or the natural:

Leaves and Steel

                In The Bridge we can choose to enter the dark door or we can gaze out into the green trees.

The Bridge

        The lit building or the dark copse:

The Grove

        The canoe or the dock:

The Yellow Painter

        We follow the zig-zag railing in The Patio to a point where we choose, again, a door or a little natural area at ground level. And look, there are two pipes in the ground.

The Patio

These pairs could characterize choices, some of which are fraught with meaning, some not so much. We could go on and on about choosing the canoe or the dock and what each choice represents in a life. What does it mean if we enter the door or go into nature? Three paintings juxtapose architecture and nature, most dramatically in the choice between dark trees and a brightly illuminated building.

I can assure you I was not thinking about choices or dyads when I created these compositions. I was looking at colors and shapes, as I was when conceiving the compositions of the many other, non-dyadic paintings I am not showing you here.

And yet, it is engaging to think this way. We do enjoy pondering possible meanings and significance to our own lives of these apparent symbols, intended or not. Here again is that recurring theme of self-reflection. When you think about it, symbolism functions only with self-reflection. For a symbol to operate as a symbol, awareness of both the symbol and its meaning is necessary, as well as the realization that their relation is symbolic! 

Is it interesting to wonder what was in the artist’s mind, especially if he claims not to have been thinking in terms of dyads at all? Possibly, but not for that long. Such pursuits are the work of art history, which is very different from the creation or the contemplation of art.

Once a painting is hardened into its final form, the important dialogue is between the viewer and the painting. The purpose of visual art is to engage the viewer and provide stimulus for contemplation, hopefully for a very long time. Symbolic content may be there, but its true value lies in what it does for the viewer, and the viewer has more important things to wonder about than the mental state of the artist.

I hope.